The Egyptian Credit Bureau company I-Score is launching an inquiry product online in the first half (H1) of 2019, according to Mohamed Kafafy, the company's chairperson. Kafafy explained that launching that service comes within the company's keenness on keeping up with the strategy of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) to expand the use of modern technological applications. He added that through this service, the credit agent will be able to print his own credit report and pay its expenses through credit cards as well as subscribe to alert services and receive the credit score on the screen or even request it to be sent as a mobile SMS. According to Kafafy, the company is planning on launching a mobile application in H2 of 2019 to allow clients to learn about their I-score after the approval of CBE. The chairperson pointed out that the company is always working on providing its services for competitive prices within the company's keenness to continue playing the role it plays as a trusted partner of banks working in Egypt. He explained that the Egyptian collateral registry was one of the projects included in the company's strategic plan for years due to its impact on the company's investment rating, especially the improvement of Egypt's ranking and doing Business, particularly for receiving credit. Furthermore, he added that this registry is also preparing an incentive for the increased credit volume provided to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), noting that the register is now considered the second in the Arab region, the fourth in Africa, and the 47th across the world. Kafafy pointed out that the I-score company, which is responsible for the management and operation of the Egyptian Register of Transferable Guarantees, has completed the measures of contracting with 58 bodies in Egypt, including banks, financial leasing companies, and several financial institutions. He added that the number of documents in the Egyptian collateral registry reached 19,757 in mid-December 2018 for EGP 478bn. "The I-score company has continued and developed the credit grading system for SMEs with and without financial lists, prepared according to the requirements of the Egyptian market, within the framework of the unified definition issued by the CBE in February 2018," Kafafy said. This product allows for an integrated list of the total data of the Egyptian market and the economic indicators required on a national level in order to develop the system of SMEs, he explained. Moreover, Kafafy clarified that the company aims to provide an integrated base of the data of the Egyptian market through which continuous development of the credit grading system takes place, allowing for the issuance of reports that explain the financial indicators of each industry, based on actual data from the Egyptian market. He added that this service also provides the data of the total indicators across various industries and regions, in addition to a basic base of the required economic indicators on a national level to advance the system of SMEs. Regarding the most important advantages of the system, Kafafy said that this is the first system that is based entirely on data collected from banks on the projects operating in Egypt not based on typical data. He added that it also allows for the standardisation of SMEs to provide aggregate data for the Egyptian market, showing the overall indicators in different industries, sectors and regions, providing a basis for the required economic indicators. “This is also an easy-to-use centralised system accessible for the I-score company's infrastructure. It also provides a number of alerts, including an alert in the case of submitting financial statement data of different financial years to another bank that has already evaluated the same client, which helps reduce fraud,” according to Kafafy. Moreover, Kafafy added that this system is objective and normative for the evaluation of SMEs, which helps lenders reduce the time needed to evaluate these projects. It also helps evaluate SMEs with a proper cost, which saves for lenders investments injected into the infrastructure, operation programmes, and the cost of maintenance of similar systems, in addition to reducing the costs collected in foreign currencies by the bodies supplying these systems, in addition to providing the necessary experience to follow-up their performance. He pointed out that the report issued from the company was generalised and developed according to banks' suggestions, under the sponsorship of the CBE. It includes the historical development of evaluating clients as well as their final evaluation, strengths, weaknesses, and the most important factors affecting decision-making. Noteworthy, the I-score company's database includes 15.5m clients, and 300,000 SMEs.
